D&D 5E BBEG Help

[TheBob427]

Hello, I am looking for advice on a warlock BBEG I want to make for a campaign with some unconventional mechanics. By the end of the campagin she will essentially be an avatar for an elder god, with all sorts of spells and wards. But the thing is, she's actually a 10 year old girl with 4 HP. So what I want to do for the fight is take the focus off of wearing down HP and instead put the focus on actually landing the hit.

I'm having trouble figuring out how to do this mechanically, and how to make it still be a satisfying fight for the players. My idea so far is a 23 AC, and if an attack gets by her AC, she makes a dex save against the attack roll. On a success, the attack misses. I've thrown in magic missile immunity and no damage on spells that would do half on a successful save, and some legendary resistances, but there's always other ways to deal damage that I don't know how to account for.

I don't know how to make sure that the players don't feel cheated either, I want the combat to feel different than most, where instead of them feeling like they have to keep wearing down HP, they have to be fast enough to actually land a hit. I don't know how to do this and account for all the possible non-conventional sources of damage without making the players feel cheated.Thanks for any help!

 

[iserith]

Missing a lot kind of blows in my experience. I'd recommend against making that a centerpiece of your challenge.

You might consider a situation where the PCs don't want to kill or knock out the girl because of some massive consequence that ensues (other than whatever qualms they might have about icing a kid). Maybe she's a "deadman's switch" for Very Bad Stuff if she dies.

Then you set up some kind of exploration challenge that occurs during the battle that the PCs have to accomplish to close off her connection to whatever plane of eldritch horrors from which she draws her powers. All the while, she's focused on offense while summoning in monsters with too many eyeballs and tentacles.

For additional tension, throw in another adventuring group that is also set on stopping the BBEG, only they are convinced she must die so they risk making things worse. A social interaction or combat challenge may ensue to prevent them from killing the girl.

 

[Cornpuff]

I'd caution against making her just flat out hard to hit since 1. Like iserith said, missing a lot blows, and 2. the whole challenge gets shut down if a PC Nat20s their first roll (I've had this happen before). If you want the mechanics of the battle itself to feel different without cheating, make it so that the PCs have to make ability checks or saves to line up their shots. Make them work to get there, and add something bad happening on a countdown to make'em speed up.

 

[TheBob427]

I'd caution against making her just flat out hard to hit since 1. Like iserith said, missing a lot blows, and 2. the whole challenge gets shut down if a PC Nat20s their first roll (I've had this happen before). If you want the mechanics of the battle itself to feel different without cheating, make it so that the PCs have to make ability checks or saves to line up their shots. Make them work to get there, and add something bad happening on a countdown to make'em speed up.

Well with how I worded her feature when I made a stat block (might as well just post it here, I'll get on that) when an attack would hit, she makes a dex save against the attack roll. A 20 automatically hits the AC, but not the dex save.

 

[TheBob427]

Have yet to add magic missile immunity.

 

[Tormyr]

What level is the party going to be?

 

[Croesus]

I really like Iserith's idea. Along those lines, you could have her immune to all damage as her heart (or whatever) is elsewhere. The party have to locate and destroy the source of her power, then she becomes vulnerable.

If you're intent on making it about hitting her, you could adapt an idea I used in a game. The party needed to kill an efreet. Normally that would have been easy. However, the efreet had six magical forges, each of which provided him with +2 AC, +1 to all saves, and tons of immunities. Per the party's plan, the rogue-assassin successfully snuck in and surprised the efreet. She rolled her to hit: 23! When I said it tinked off the efreet, the players really, really freaked out.

Eventually they figured out that the forges were the problem (they glowed every time they helped the efreet avoid a hit). Once destroyed, the efreet was easy meat. The encounter was a non-standard challenge and the player of the rogue still enjoys relating her story of the assassination that "tinked".